1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to a method and a system for feeding media sheet of media from a stack of media sheets and, more particularly, to a method and system for controlling when a subsequent media sheet is picked after a first media sheet is fed and handling misfed media sheets.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printing device such as an electrophotographic printer or an inkjet printer, for example, typically includes a media sheet feed system having a media picking mechanism for sequentially picking and feeding media sheets from a stack of media sheets.
Manufacturers of printing devices are continually challenged to improve printing device performance. One way in which improvement is sought is to achieve higher throughput rates. To deliver higher throughput, one approach is to keep the interpage gap between fed media sheet as small as possible. However, there has been a long standing need to ensure that a detectable gap exists between each media sheet picked. If the gap is too small or missing, paper jam may occur.
In some designs, sensors are placed in a media tray close to the leading edge of a media sheet to be picked. Typically, the system waits for the sensor to detect the trailing edge of the picked media sheet before committing to the next pick. While this arrangement generally ensures a sufficient gap between sequentially fed media sheets and robustness in a sheet feeding operation, difficulty in designing sensors to be placed very close to the leading edge of the media stack to provide for quick sensing remains a challenge. Oftentimes, the distance from a pick location to the initial media edge sensor defines a gap between fed media sheets that is more than a required interpage gap to achieve desired throughputs and prevent paper jams at the same time. In prior media feeding systems, the minimum interpage gap the systems could deliver was greater than the distance from the pick location to the sensor due to motor constraints during startup and accelerating the media sheet that is being picked up to the desired media process speed. These various factors limit the maximum throughput of the printing device. Accordingly, there is a need to improve throughput.